More fears

Back at my friend's home north of Stuttgart, the town was having their annual medieval festival.  My friend and I, along with the whinging pommy bastard who is the other male member of my friend's family, laughed at the jesters, listened to the merry tunes, and drank some hearty grog.  For those who are unaware, as a former Australian, the term I just used to describe an Englishman was the most common one used at any drinking establishment in New South Wales and is not necessarily derogatory.  Whinging means complaining, and pommy is the common term for a Brit in Oz, as limey is in the U.S .  Bastard is usually added for emphasis, especially at cricket matches.  Well, maybe it is derogatory.  Nothing personal, John.

The Brit did wonder a bit about my explanation at the Volkfest earlier in the day concerning fear in America.  He wondered if I really believed what I had said, or if it was the biere talking.

I was born into an America that was taught to fear.  The earliest I remember was the Soviet Union which was run by dictatorial communists who wanted to dominate the world, so we had to build countless nuclear weapons that could destroy an enemy, and likely the entire world, many times over to deter an attack upon our country.  We had an appropriate acronym for this policy, which was called MAD, for Mutually Assured Destruction.  Tens of thousands of Americans died fighting in a war in Korea because we had to fear the Communist Chinese Red Hordes who wanted to dominate the world.  The Soviet surrogate, Cuba, had to be feared, so it became US policy to overthrow the Cuban government by supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion, the establishment of Operation Mongoose, and the eventual naval blockade called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Vietnam War became an equally large reason to fear the Soviets and Chinese, because the fall of Vietnam would result in a domino effect, culminating in the Vietnamese dominating the world, or at least Vanuatu, Brunei, and the Maldives.  Twice the number of Americans died in Vietnam as had died in Korea.  The US government knew that the Vietnamese had fought the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, and the French again, and despite no indication of wanting to dominate anyone but themselves, the US had to fear them.  They are now a welcome U.S. trading partner .

After Vietnam, the US still had the Soviets and Chinese to fear.  We soon lost the Chinese when Nixon visited the Great Wall in 1972.  But, another fear was created when the Shah of Iran, an ally of the US, was replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  Now the US had not only Arabs, a whole race of people to fear, but an unusual religion, Islam.  Ignoring the fact that Iranians are Caucasians and not Arabs, the religion thing was a bonus for generating fear, because it was a completely foreign, read non-Christian, religion.

The Soviet Union disintegrated, and Communist China turned into Business China, so the Arab / Islam fear was encouraged.  After the 9/11 attacks, fear of Arabs and Islam grew into the fear we know today.  Then fear of Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, etc.

Of course there had been other fears:  The Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and many others.  And these are all only the foreign country fears to which Americans have been constantly subjected.


Don't get me started on domestic fears of black, brown, yellow, and red people.  Keep Americans fearing that all their problems are caused by others, and you end up with Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.


Yes fear is a basic requirement for living in the USA.